Eight Years After Witchcraft Accusation, Boy Graduates As One Of Akwa Ibom’s Top Students

 

It’s 8 years ago today and through the years I have shared some parts of Ernest’s inhuman and horrible experiences living on the streets for 2 years, outcasted by the entire community, accused of being a witch.

PEGASUS REPORTERS, LAGOS | FEBRUARY 1, 2022

Ernest, a young Nigerian boy, has graduated as one of Akwa Ibom´s top students and gained admission into university to study Electrical Engineering about 8 years after he was accused of being a witch and ostracized in his community.

According to Danish aid worker, Anja Ringgren Lovén, who rescued him, Ernest graduated on Friday, January 29, 2022.

She also revealed how the youth leaders in the community tried to burn Ernest alive one night they found him sleeping in the bushes.

Read her:
In January 2014 a Danish documentary photographer Thoeger Kappel Nielsen came to Nigeria to film our work. It was the first documentary I made out of many, aired on Danish television and National Geographic.

David and I had organized an educational program in one of the more hostile communities where a lot of children were accused of being witches. We invited the community leaders and paramount rulers who all came from the nearby villages to participate in the program.

What we were not prepared for was how a peaceful event suddenly turned into a dangerous situation.

After some hours of educating on children´s rights some of the villagers suddenly brought a young boy and literally threw him very aggressive on the ground in front of David and I telling us that he was a witch and that we should take him away or they would kill him.

It was the day David and I rescued Ernest.

When we were about to leave the villagers suddenly surrounded our car, opened the car door and grabbed Ernest´s arm and tried to pull him out while the car was moving. I was sitting next to Ernest, pregnant at the time, but just grabbed Ernest’s other arm to push him back into the car. It was a chaos. It’s 8 years ago today and through the years I have shared some parts of Ernest’s inhuman and horrible experiences living on the streets for 2 years, outcasted by the entire community, accused of being a witch.

I have shared updates about how the youth leaders tried to burn Ernest alive one night they found him sleeping in the bushes. The pain of the fire woke him immediately and he managed to escape. But his friend was not that lucky.

During the time Ernest struggled to survive alone on the streets, he met another boy accused of being a witch. They became good friends and helped each other to survive.

That night when the youth leaders tried to burn Ernest alive, they caught his friend.

Ernest was hiding in the bushes and witnessed how they killed his friend. They put a robe around the boys neck and tied him to the back of a car and drove him around until he was dead.

Ernest remember how his friend fought for his life trying to breathe while the car dragged him around.

He was only 9 years old. Yesterday Ernest graduated from Secondary School!! I don´t have any words to describe how proud I am, said Anja Ringgren Lovén in a post.

Ernest Gains Admission To Study Engineering

Not only did Ernest graduate, he graduated as one of the top students of the entire school and it’s one of the high standard secondary schools where the competition is very high among the most intelligent students in the entire state!!

8 years ago when we rescued Ernest he did not speak or write one word of English. But it only took him a few months before he was almost fluent in English. Not only has Ernest always studied hard, his determination to overcome challenges and his strong will to survive is an inspiration to all of us.

8 years ago Ernest was accused of being a witch, yesterday he graduated as one of Akwa Ibom’s top students and next month he will start university to study electric engineering !

Thanks to everyone who supports Land of Hope. Ernest has come this far because of you. I cried all day yesterday. I was very emotional.

According to Sources from Wikipedia, Ringgren Lovén is the founder of the charity organization DINNødhjælp, which has been protecting and rescuing children accused of being witches in Nigeria since 2012.

She became known in 2016 when a photo from one of her rescue actions of witch children went viral. In the picture, Anja squats in front of a small naked and starved boy, who she gives water with her water bottle. Anja subsequently took the boy to a children’s center in Nigeria, where he miraculously survived.

She named him Hope, and the rescue operation became a major catalyst in Lovén’s struggle to tell the rest of the world about witch children and the superstition that prevailed in Nigeria.

Anja Ringgren Lovén was born and raised in Frederikshavn. She graduated from Frederikshavn Gymnasium in 1998. After high school, Lovén traveled with her twin sister to Israel in Kibbutz and spent the following couple of years traveling around the Middle East. In 2001, she was trained as a stewardess at Maersk Air, but six months later Lovén quit her job to look after her mother, who was declared terminal with lung cancer.

After her mother’s death, Lovén first moved to Aalborg in 2002 and a few years later to Aarhus, where she got a job in a clothing store in Bruun’s Gallery. Later, she became store manager in the Butler Loft.

In 2009, she travelled to Malawi as an observer for the National Church Aid for three months. When she returned home, she began to raise money for a school renovation project in Tanzania, where she traveled on her own.

In 2012, she founded DINNødhjelp while working as a salesman in the clothing store RAW in Aarhus. The following year, she quit her job and sold everything she owned to pursue her dream of saving the so-called ‘witch children’ in Nigeria who are accused of being witches and ostracized or tortured to death because of the widespread superstition in Nigeria.

In 2014, to open an orphanage in Nigeria, Lovén and a Nigerian law student, David Emmanuel Umem founded DINNet Relief’s sister organization African Children’s Aid, Education and Development Foundation (ACAEDF).

In 2015, Lovén and Umem bought a large piece of land in the state of Akwa Ibom in Nigeria, where, with the help of Engineers Without Borders, they built the Land of Hope Children’s Center with, among other things, a children’s hospital and a business school.

Land of Hope is a fenced-in, three-acre site with space for 100 children, designed to provide a safe and loving environment for the children and at the same time as an important element in the fight against superstition in the country.

Lovén works and lives alternately in Denmark and Nigeria, where she manages DINNet relief and heads Land of Hope with Umem.

Lovén has been giving lectures since 2014 on what it means to sell everything you own to pursue your dream. In the lectures, she also talks, among other things, about life at the Land of Hope Children’s Center and how to bring about the superstition in Nigeria.

She is today one of Denmark’s most booked speakers.

Anja is married to David Emmanuel Umem, and together they have son David Jr., who was born August 13, 2014

This piece was shared to Pegasus Reporters & Guest Whatsapp Forum by Kenneth Chiazor

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